[Gaming] Diablo 3 : Ser Farm-A-Lot

[Gared]

Also, Gared, interesting read. I'm sorry you disliked the game so much. One thing I would note though, would be for you to compare the storyline in D1 to the same standard. A4 has always been Heaven/Hell (I mean, the story is about fighting the devil.)

Well yeah, I mean, that part I get. We're here to kill demons, the game is called Diablo, so Diablo we must kill. I'm not really expecting anything revolutionary; I'd just think with the amount of time they had, they could have come up with something other than so many of the same exact plot elements, sometimes not even in different order.

Sorry, Gared, but they want you to go to the AH - preferably the RMAH where Blizzard will make more micropayments.

Exactly, and that's my only problem with the AH. I don't care if people spend their life savings on items, I don't care that Blizzard's acting like a drug pusher, soliciting money for pixels, I don't care about game balance in PvP (I was never likely to PvP anyway); I just wish they hadn't taken the fun out of the game in order to drive people to the AH, you know? Make it like the pay-for-play items in WoW, where you can get all of the same gear as everyone else through the GAH or through progression, and sell useless but cool items, like mounts and novelty pets. Hell, if I'd had more fun with the game, and actually made it through Inferno and started playing co-op, I'd probably have been willing to drop actual cash on things like special dyes and/or models for weapons. Things that didn't change the stats, but changed the look of the item, that could be a lot of fun.

Edit: And it's not like they completely stripped out gear drops. The gear on the AH has to come from somewhere, so it is dropping. It's just unreliably dropping.

 

[Necronic]

Like I said though, I think that the GAH will still see a LOT of use because the gold can then be sold for cash. I think it's definitely a "wait and see" thing for the RMAH. Current prices are ridiculously high, and I doubt anyone is buying anything off of there right now. Give it a week, or maybe a month, and you will see good stuff show up.

Also, I've really changed my mind about crafting. I used to think it was a total waste of money. But now I'm coming to realize that it's a great way to get gear (if you want do avoid resorting to the AH, or refuse to pay the exhorbitant prices that permeate the 60+ gear). I would suggest you guys that are still playing to give it a shot. Once you hit 60 you will need to find the better recipes. I've found a couple so far. Nothing amazing yet, but some decent stuff. I have extras of a couple as well, like a "Fine" (5 slot) WD offhand.

 

[Squidleybits]

I have several of the exalted plans. Its worth it to learn them?

 

[Bubble181]

I do intend to upgrade the Blacksmith and Jeweler, but not for a good while yet. Not worth making the lower items, and the same money which is "a lot" for me now, is complete peanuts in a couple of acts.

As for difficulty in Inferno being made harder: current events indicate otherwise? Nah. My claim is that, like D2 and so many other games, it'll first be made easier (because everyone whines), then gradually made harder (because now people whine that it's too easy to get gear/get to where they are/etc).
More and more, the msot vocal group of gamers are the entitled dickheads. They want to reach top level and be elite, then want no-one else to be able to get there. Fuck, I've followed game boards for too long not to know that routine; even if people don't recognize it for what it is.

1. People get to 60
2. People whine it's too hard to do Inferno without Inferno-farmed gear
3. Inferno is made (slightly) easier
4. People who could play Inferno before, can now farm Inferno
5. People who couldn't play Inferno before, can now play Inferno with iems bought from the farmers
6. The more people are in Inferno, the more supply there is
7. More supply => lower prices => easier access
8. People complain Inferno is too easy - not an accomplishment anymore because anyone can get there
9. Inferno is made harder again; so only those already decked out in top gear can farm it
10. People who come in have to buy items to be able to begin in Inferno
11. Newcomers can't afford the vastly-overinflated gold prices, don't want to pay in the RMAH.
or
11. Newcomers can pick up gear that's 98% as effective as the "perfect" gear for peanuts in GAH, and everyone has the second-best gear they can get once they ding 60.

Both of those outcomes are undesirable.

For harcore players, the thrill will be gone soon - compare to WOW and you'll see why. Not enough possibility to show off your 1337ness, not enough different endgame content, no real reason to go through the game more than once with each class. Once you're top inWoW, you can strut about, earn more money, keep going,... Once you've got the top gear in D3, there's nothing else. There's no end game besides grinding...
For casual players, Inferno doesn't matter and Nightmare and Hell add little to Normal. If you consider Normal to be the whole game (which it still is for the majority and certainly for the most casual players), D3 is weaker in several ways than D2X. I do believe many of those will be adjusted in coming patches/expansions. See what Gared said about why itemisation in D3 is less "fun" than in D2 - the same is true when you compare D2 vanilla with D2X.

I can't help it, but I really honestly do believe that, unless they manage to turn things around somehow - and I know how I'd like it but I don't think that's necessarily the best, or even a valid, solution - D3 won't have the longevity of D2. It's a mix of MMO and AARPG, and so far, instead of synergizing, I think it's weaker than "purebreed" games of either type for their respective players.

 

[Vrii]

I actually completely agree with everything Gared said. The process of getting to Inferno is terrible, boring, shitty and frustrating. I did absolutely everything all the way up in a group of 2-4 people, and didn't split off to start soloing anything until we hit Inferno. It's boring as hell to replay the same content 3 times in order to get to the actual game, and not getting any decent drops from bosses for two full difficulties is a really, really strange design decision.

On the other hand - and even with some of the annoyances and punishment involved with it - Inferno is a lot of fun. Random elite packs range between challenging and impossible, depending on your setup. Loot drops become consistent and frequent if you're good enough to keep your stacks up, and it's going to be possible to get the best gear as early as act 1 in the next patch, albeit at a low, low drop rate. Most importantly, regardless of how easy or hard you find certain random bosses, the story bosses are typically well-balanced and challenging but not impossible for all classes. I spent the better part of a night wiping on the Butcher before I bumped my gear up enough to get him before the room was all fire, I wiped for ~2-3 hours on Belial before I could consistently control the incoming damage well enough in all phases to stay alive long enough to wear him down, and last night it took me 1-2 hours of practice on Azmodan to get the feel for dodging fireballs, killing portals, running out of the bad stuff, and keeping some uptime on him to get him down. For everyone who's quitting the game before getting here, I understand why you're doing it, but I'm still sad that you're missing out on the real fun this game has to offer because Blizzard made the poor decision of filling up the middle of the game with boring, tedious shit.

And I still don't really understand all the complaints about the AH. This shit was absolutely going to happen whether it was sanctioned by Blizzard or not. Look at all the shady websites built around selling D2 gear illegally - that was happening here before the RMAH opened up too, and the ads I'm getting at the top of this page are for sites illegally selling D3 gold as well. And yeah, Blizz takes a cut of what you sell now, but - and here's the big thing that nobody seems to be mentioning - they're also policing it to make sure that when you spend your money, you actually get the item you thought you were getting. Nobody is getting ripped off or cheated, and I'd really want to see some numbers on how much of the gear up there is hacked/stolen before I could even speak to whether that's a problem at all.

 

[Bubble181]

Hmm, the problem I and many have with the AH isn't that it exists - sure I prefer legal options over the illegal ones - but that many other parts of the game have been changed to accomodate it.
The middle of the game is shit, in your words - because of the auction houses. You just *can't* give everyone drops like D2 when everyone can auction off everything. Even now the AHs are stuffed to the brim with items for every level, of every kind.

 

[Vrii]

That doesn't actually make sense to me - it's not the mid-level gear that the AH is, or at least should be, based around. It's the level 60 inferno-level gear, because that's when you actually start needing it to progress. I don't see how having more of the level 30-50 rares in the market would have a negative impact on anything.

I think the middle of the game is shit because Blizzard fucked up and didn't spend as much time testing/balancing thinking about the middle difficulties, and focused on Normal, which they knew everyone would play, and Inferno, which they knew the hardcore players would actually care about. NM and Hell are just filler to gradually increase the difficulty, to get people thinking about their builds, and to get characters leveled from 30-60.

 

[Vrii]

Mostly unrelated: I just made my first $4! Yay me!

 

[Gared]

I actually completely agree with everything Gared said. The process of getting to Inferno is terrible, boring, shitty and frustrating. I did absolutely everything all the way up in a group of 2-4 people, and didn't split off to start soloing anything until we hit Inferno. It's boring as hell to replay the same content 3 times in order to get to the actual game, and not getting any decent drops from bosses for two full difficulties is a really, really strange design decision.

On the other hand - and even with some of the annoyances and punishment involved with it - Inferno is a lot of fun. Random elite packs range between challenging and impossible, depending on your setup. Loot drops become consistent and frequent if you're good enough to keep your stacks up, and it's going to be possible to get the best gear as early as act 1 in the next patch, albeit at a low, low drop rate. Most importantly, regardless of how easy or hard you find certain random bosses, the story bosses are typically well-balanced and challenging but not impossible for all classes. I spent the better part of a night wiping on the Butcher before I bumped my gear up enough to get him before the room was all fire, I wiped for ~2-3 hours on Belial before I could consistently control the incoming damage well enough in all phases to stay alive long enough to wear him down, and last night it took me 1-2 hours of practice on Azmodan to get the feel for dodging fireballs, killing portals, running out of the bad stuff, and keeping some uptime on him to get him down. For everyone who's quitting the game before getting here, I understand why you're doing it, but I'm still sad that you're missing out on the real fun this game has to offer because Blizzard made the poor decision of filling up the middle of the game with boring, tedious shit.

See, I think that part of the problem, if not most of it, is that Blizzard's big product these days is WoW; and the game director, Jay Wilson, came to the game by way of several MMOs. In WoW, everyone expects the leveling process to be fun but not terribly challenging and the vast majority of players know that the real game begins once you hit max level. The really fun part of the game is the end game stuff, raiding and running dungeons. The problem for D3 with making the stuff leading up to the "end game" boring and the "end game" really fun, is that Inferno shouldn't be an "end game" it's really only meant for hardcore gamers, but the race-to-end-game model doesn't work for that. The race-to-end-game model is meant for everyone, regardless of skill level.

Once WoW became everything Blizzard knew, and multiplayer became the king, Diablo 3 and, to a degree, Starcraft 2 were screwed. It took me what, 2 to 5 days to beat SC2?Five days tops for a $60 game, that the "ending" hasn't been released for yet (and won't be for at least two more expansions), and for which we'll have to pay for what are essentially Act 2 and Act 3. At least we got 4 acts for Diablo 3 without having to pay for each one. Before WoW, Blizzard did Diablo, Warcraft, and Starcraft (and some other things); all of the levels and quests had to be fun, and for the most part they were. Furthermore, things had to really be balanced and well tested before they were released. There were only 21 patches in the 9 years from the release date of D2. There've already been 9 patches and/or hot-fixes to D3, and we're still 2 days away from the first month anniversary of launch, and there've been 22 Starcraft 2 patches in less than 2 years from release. That doesn't spell good game design and testing to me.

 

[Vrii]

The SC2 patches I can understand - there are hundreds, maybe thousands of people making their living off of it, and Blizz is taking that seriously and doing their best to make sure the balance is where it needs to be. As far as D3 goes, it's a lot less impressive, particularly given how long the beta ran for, and how limited the content they actually opened up to their beta testers was. Inferno's fun, albeit with some pretty glaring balance issues, and aside from that it could have been a whole lot better.

 

[Bowielee]

I didn't realize how sparse the second and third act were until my second time through on normal. It literally took me only a few hours to get through both with my barbarian. I get the feeling that those acts are just incomplete. Act 1 and to a lesser extent Act 2 had a ton of randomly spawning dungeons, random quests/npcs, etc... but those seem virtually non-existent as you progress through the game.

 

[Squidleybits]

I made it to the Butcher last night on Inferno and wow! He's a beast! I never had issues with him on the other difficulties. I only tried a few times as it was late. He's toast tonight!!! (hopefully)

 

[Necronic]

There were only 21 patches in the 9 years from the release date of D2. There've already been 9 patches and/or hot-fixes to D3, and we're still 2 days away from the first month anniversary of launch, and there've been 22 Starcraft 2 patches in less than 2 years from release. That doesn't spell good game design and testing to me.

I more or less agree with your other statements about Inferno/WoW/Endgame, but this one is completely backwards. D2 was NEVER WELL BALANCED. This really can't be stressed enough. There were SOOOOO many balance problems with D2 that were never addressed. There were also major security problems with it that were never fixed (ie 'duping')

The continuous/heavy amount of patching you are seeing is an effort to deal with security holes and to continuously balance. Balancing is ALWAYS a continuous process, there isn't another way around it.

 

[Gared]

I more or less agree with your other statements about Inferno/WoW/Endgame, but this one is completely backwards. D2 was NEVER WELL BALANCED. This really can't be stressed enough. There were SOOOOO many balance problems with D2 that were never addressed. There were also major security problems with it that were never fixed (ie 'duping')

The continuous/heavy amount of patching you are seeing is an effort to deal with security holes and to continuously balance. Balancing is ALWAYS a continuous process, there isn't another way around it.

I guess I'll get to see that starting tonight. Screwed up my barb last night and basically made him non-viable unless I want to farm Normal content for more levels. Thinking of running a bowazon for a while and seeing how that goes.

 

[Necronic]

That was a huge problem I had with D2. 2 entire classes were effectively unplayable (Paladin and Necromancer), and so many of the "cool" trees (like some of the druid trees or assassin trees) ended up being unplayable in the end. So while I spent all this time bringing my character up to lvl 99, only to find out that it would never work. And that was a ton of wasted effort.

So I had two choices. I could use "tried and true" builds, meaning I had no real say in the matter, which then made me question why they didn't just start me out with the build. OR I could have someone twink my character up to 99 in a couple of hours and then try a new build out. A pretty major gamble, and only possible because I was able to do the twinking, something that is itself incredibly unbalanced. Most people would just go with the first option. What happened to you, on the other hand, represents terrible game design and should never have happened.

The gameplay up to the endgame in D2 was more fun, I'll give you that. The problem was that the endgame itself in D2 was horrible. You basically took 1 of 4 cookie cutter builds (whirlwind barb, bowazon, or one of the couple of playable, and horrifically overpowered mage builds, and one really odd Wolf Druid build) and that was it. Any ingenuity was punished. Any solo play was punished (due to the option of twinking). And while the gear was more interesting it was also totally broken due to duping.

 

[Gared]

I don't know, it was pretty much my own fault that I screwed up the character. I over-reacted to the difficulty of one mini-boss in Diablo's Sanctuary - you know the one, Lord What'sit Seis - and respecced from Frenzy to Concentrate without taking into account how much more mana I'd need for a Concentrate barb than I did for a Frenzy barb, since my Frenzy barb was using Double Swing maxed out at 20 ranks for a -2 mana cost, and Concentrate was stuck at 10 ranks and actually cost mana to use. I'm really not upset about having to start over, and now I know that if I do run a new barb later on, I'll pay more attention to his stats/skills/gear and be better prepared for that specific fight.

Also, remember, I'm playing single-player, offline mode; so there is no twinking and I don't have to worry about gear being totally broken due to duping. The part of the game that I enjoy is the figuring out what does or doesn't work, starting from scratch. Part of the reason I have so many alts on WoW is because I'd go away for a few months, come back, and forget how all of the math worked on my character and I'd just restart; aside from my main. To me, once the math itself is all figured out, the game becomes less fun because it's less of a challenge. I'm pretty sure I'll be playing Diablo 2 for years to come (basically until Blizzard stops letting me download and install it on new computers), working my way through class and build combo after class and build combo, until I've figured out what works best for which character (without just using someone else' online build), and then I'll move on to something else. Probably something non-gaming related, like statistics, or trying to solve some of those complex math problems that people have been trying to solve for hundreds of years.

 

[Bubble181]

And, well, since it's single player and off line, non-competitive, if you really want totry out a build or repair a "busted" build, there's always Atma. Which obviously unbalances things and is out-of-game and whatever - but it's still useful, and only possible because you're not forced to use the game on their server.
And Necro was perfectly playable in late Hell - at least with the last patch, I admit they were horrible in some earlier iterations (especially zoo keeper necro's - the skeletons were useless past the half-way point of normal); it simply isn't/wasn't as effective as other builds...That doesn't mean it's not possible, just that it's sub-optimal when compares to, say, a hammerdin. If you're playing for fun, that's not a problem. If you're playing ladder or so, obviously, it's bad.

Eh, D2 was far from perfect as well, anyway.

 

[Necronic]

Skele Necro really was awesome. It was one of the biggest tragedies to me that it was unviable. The only build I remember being at all decent with a Necro had to do with a bone spear and a blood golem.

 

[Ravenpoe]

I remember being pretty successful with a skeleton, clay golem, ce and dim vision necro in hell diff. But then, i don't remember which patch this was

 

[Gared]

Oh believe me, I'm not going to try to claim that any game was a perfect game; every game I've played from Might and Magic through Skyrim has had its issues, things I'd liked to have seen tweaked one way or another, balance issues, playability issues, design flaws, etc. It's just that, for my money, D2 provides a lot more playable time and challenge than D3, which is really sad considering the fact that I had to pay (twice) for D2 LoD and I got D3 for free (or at least, for no more money that I would have already expended for my WoW subscription). Heck, I'm even considering getting in touch with my friends over in Sweden to see if they have a copy of the original (which, upon further reflection, I realized that I have played) that I might be able to borrow for a while, if you know what I mean.

 

[PatrThom]

Skele Necro really was awesome. It was one of the biggest tragedies to me that it was unviable. The only build I remember being at all decent with a Necro had to do with a bone spear and a blood golem.

My favorite was to use a posse of skeletal mages + rogue retainer for ranged and a blood golem + iron maiden for melee. The only things I ever had to worry about were bosses (since the golem wouldn't benefit from the life steal). Unfortunately, I had to worry quite a bit about them (or let my rogue retainer do most of the killing) whenever I had a boss battle.

--Patrick

 

[Bowielee]

Thanks to all this Diablo 2 talk, I'm currently re-downloading the game so that I can play with a Necromancer again

 

[Terrik]

Diablo 3: So good it makes you want to play Diablo 2.

 

[Bowielee]

Basically, I wouldn't call it a BAD game a all, it's just that it's not as good as I expected. Honestly, the second half of the game feels rushed, and I think it was. I know that may seem like a funny thing to say about a sequel that came out over 10 years after the original, but actually, D3 hasn't been in development all that long as far as a whole new revamp goes.

I kind of knew this was coming when Blizzard got bought out, but the stamp of larger corporate shenanigans is really starting to show all over Blizzard's titles.

 

[Ravenpoe]

At least it's not showing as much as others.

*cough*Bioware*cough

 

[Bowielee]

Yet...

I'm thinking that MAYBE expansions to WoW will be my only future purchases. I'm even starting to doubt if I even want to get Heart of the Swarm and the Protoss expansions when they come out.

 

[Dave]

 

[Squidleybits]

I love it!!!

 

[Necronic]

You know I have yet to touch the RMAH. It looks like the GAH is still flush with really good equipment.

Also Act 3 Inferno is probably the closest I have ever come to paying for a fist fucking.

Edit - Oh yeah, and if there are any enterprising webcomic folks out htere I have a great D3 webcomic for you:

The hero has saved the day, Diablo (or whoever) is dead and the townspeople can start rebuilding their lives. A leader looking guy says "Ok, now we need to go out there and gather all those supplies. We have refugees piling up and we don't have enough food for them. Those barrels and crates are our lifeline for the next weeks and months. It won't mean anything to have driven back the forces of darkness if we can't drive back the forces of hunger."

The hero is seen guiltily sneaking off and whistling.

Or you could do it with the heaven scene. One of the head angels is like "The only thing that helped me get through this horror is the knowledge that I will one day see my prized vase collection again."

 

[Vrii]

String of Ears made a huge, huge difference for me in Act 3 - as in, I went from getting completely destroyed by any of the strong melee mobs no matter what to being able to tank them while my cooldowns were up, and only had to run away like a little bitch while they were on cooldown. I've actually cleared through the first half of Act 4 and am now solo-farming the ponies with 679 being my highest resist, and the average being more like 575. Absolutely everything I've read says I should be running at least ~1000 resist all to be as far as I am, but I'm managing to chug along in spite of it.

Not looking forward to the attack speed nerfs though; I have a lot of it, and not only is my damage going to go down, but it's also going to be an indirect nerf to my resource generation, life on hit, and overall awesomeness. Not happy that most of my gear is going to become dramatically less valuable because Blizzard didn't test things properly.

 

[Bowielee]

My WD is getting pwned on nightmare right now. I'm trying to find that sweet spot of enough int and enough vitality to survive and still kill stuff pretty quickly. I've dumped all pets but my zombie in favor of haunting(with the life steal rune), locust swarm (with the mana steal rune) and acid cloud.

Doggies just don't have the survivability needed to be feasable when the elite mobs start hitting hard.

 

[CynicismKills]

I hear amazing things about String of Ears for Barbs, I just don't have 10m to spend on a decent roll.

Also wow people are pissed about the AS nerf, especially Monks. Apparently the more viable Monk item build is stacking AS and Life on Hit, and using (I think) the Dodge-based build. Losing all that AS is going to hurt.
Added at: 20:57

My WD is getting pwned on nightmare right now. I'm trying to find that sweet spot of enough int and enough vitality to survive and still kill stuff pretty quickly. I've dumped all pets but my zombie in favor of haunting(with the life steal rune), locust swarm (with the mana steal rune) and acid cloud.

From what I understand WD becomes heavily reliant on control effects and Spirit Walk once you hit Nightmare. Kinda disappointed the pets aren't very viable once you clear Normal, save for the Zombie Rush bear glyph.

 

[Squidleybits]

My WD doesn't use pets any more. They are dead almost instantly even on regular fights. The zombie bears are fantastic though. They do a ton of damage.

Spirit walk is also a lifesaver. Especially with the passive that reduces the cool down.

I had to almost match her int and vitality so she can survive.

 

[Bowielee]

Here's the thing, the dogs could be viable if summoning them and using the explosion power weren't two seperate things to take up my very limited spell bars. I realize it can be close to an I win button because it does massive damage, but just implement a longer cooldown or something and put them on the same power. I'm at the point where I NEED to have grasp of the dead on my right click for crowd control and I'm still trying to decide on my primary attack. I just plain don't like the spider attacks, but I kind of vaccilate between dart gun and firebomb.

 

[Squidleybits]

Two separate skill slots really makes it a hard option to use often. Three if you count the passive to give you an extra dog. I need to have zombie bears/soul harvest/spirit walk up to stay alive now. I find zombie bears to be pretty close to an I win button....I just need more mana or to have it regenerate faster so I can use it more often.

I have grasp as my right click. I have Wall of Zombies up sometimes too for large groups.

I really like the dart gun with splinters. I use the mana drain one too sometimes. Maybe its just me, but I had a hard time aiming the firebombs decently from far away.